Gobliiins Series (1991)
Coktel Vision's Multi-Protagonist Point-and-Click Puzzle Choreography Created by Pierre Gilhodes and Muriel Tramis
Created in 1991 at French publisher-studio Coktel Vision by comic illustrator Pierre Gilhodes and designer Muriel Tramis, the Gobliiins series reformulated point-and-click adventure design around compact, slapstick environmental puzzles solved through synchronized multi-character abilities. Spanning Gobliiins (1991), Gobliins 2: The Prince Buffoon (1992), Goblins Quest 3 (1993), and later revivals in 2009 and 2023, its title orthography directly encodes the number of controllable goblins.
Coktel Vision Origins, Bande Dessinée Aesthetics, and Tri-Character Division
By the start of the 1990s, French studio Coktel Vision—originally capitalized through educational Thomson software before expanding into historical and erotic-thriller adventures under Martinique-born engineer Muriel Tramis—sought an internationally accessible family adventure format distinct from American verb-bar parsers at Lucasfilm Games and sprawling fatalistic labyrinths at Sierra On-Line. Collaborating with cartoonist and animator Pierre Gilhodes, Tramis structured the 1991 debut Gobliiins (spelled with three letter i's) as twenty-two self-contained, single-screen dioramas drawn with expressive Franco-Belgian comic-strip linework and voiced in phonetic gibberish ("Goblinese"), minimizing localization barriers across Atari ST, Amiga, and MS-DOS. Seeking to cure King Angoulafre from a voodoo doll curse, the player alternates among three specialized protagonists who share a single collective stamina meter: Oups (Dwayne in North America), a technician capable of holding and applying one inventory item at a time; Ignatius (Hooter), an erratic wizard whose spells animate or resize surrounding props; and Asgard (BoBo), a brawler who climbs ropes and strikes obstacles while triggering slapstick hazards.
Orthographic Sequel Evolution, Synchronized Timing, and Later Revivals
Each subsequent installment adjusted its mechanical structure alongside the number of i's in its title. Released in 1992, Gobliins 2: The Prince Buffoon (two i's) removed the punitive shared health bar—eliminating dead-end game-over states—and paired two simultaneously commandable heroes, the polite tactician Fingus and the brash prankster Winkle. Because players could queue actions for both characters at the same instant, puzzles evolved into split-second slapstick timing routines requiring one goblin to distract or trigger a mechanism at the exact frame his partner interacted elsewhere on screen. Following Sierra On-Line's acquisition of Coktel Vision, Goblins Quest 3 (one i, 1993) focused on a single goblin journalist, Blount, whose intermittent lycanthropy altered his physical abilities across larger scrolling environments populated by playable animal helpers. After sixteen years of dormancy, original creator Pierre Gilhodes returned to direct a 3D revival, Gobliiins 4 (2009), restoring the three-goblin trio, and later independently produced a hand-drawn 2D continuation, Gobliiins 5 (2023), preserving Coktel Vision's compact spatial puzzle lineage.